I bought my first brand new car this weekend. I’d owned 14 cars in the last decade and I’d finally decided it was time to find something that had everything I needed and settle down.
After test driving cars for a few weeks and finding the right dealer, the intricate web of cash, trade-in value, salesman and creditor began to take shape. I’d picked a particularly popular car for my area, which I knew was going to be an issue when it came to price.
I’d worked at a dealer and knew all the tricks and right things to say. I tried to talk the salesman down off of color, features, holdback and took a stab at guessing his own price of purchase. Sadly, nothing worked.
The salesman went back to his manager for a measly few hundred dollar discount off of the sticker price. The answer was a resounding “no”. There was no offers of kickbacks, added features or a meet-in-the-middle sum. The price was the price, and I was going to pay it if I wanted that car.
After carefully considering my options, I took two routes of attack. First, I talked my salesman up on my trade-in price by a thousand dollars. The dealership was going to turn around and sell my vehicle to a used dealer at that very same price, so they were getting their money out of it in any case. It did, however, benefit my overall value as a buyer since my loan would be 7% less.
Second, I weighed the benefits of having my new car versus the drawbacks of my old vehicle. I live far out in the country and after selling my truck, only had a motorcycle going into the Oregon winter. In the new car the space for the dog, friends, safety, reliability and looks all factored into my decision. Ultimately, some pride had to be swallowed. Who in their right mind pays sticker price for a new car? Yet the price of that pride weighed heavy in my mind — how could I give up such immense utility from my new vehicle for simple fact that I wasn’t able to “bargain down” a car dealer?
Sense and sensibility won out. I’d essentially talked down the price of my vehicle by a thousand bucks via my trade-in, had a payment that was well within my budget and would have a vehicle that served every purpose my old one did not. I wasn’t going to be stuck freezing myself to death all winter on a motorcycle and I’d made everything work for me in a financial sense.
I told you that story to tell you this one: The NBA players are riding a motorcycle into a cold, dark winter. Four months ago I wrote about the utter ridiculousness of Etan Thomas’ faux moral stance during the lockout, essentially saying that the players don’t quite understand how ridiculous their cry for help to NBA fans sounds coming from 6′ 10″ financially stable gods of society.
Now, that trend continues as NBA players just don’t quite get what the current talks mean. Kelly Dwyer mentioned in a post a few days ago about the NBA players not understanding the simple ability of the ownership to hold out. While the players have some good points on their side of the argument, that they have to bolster their position with emotion lends itself to a poor exchange rate considering the owners can back their own position with, well, cash.
As wealthy men, the NBA players seem to have the same disconnect with the finances of ownership that we fans do with players. Most of us can’t imagine what it’s like to make $10 million a year — hell, the lottery in my state is only for $6 million — and I don’t think Derek Fisher and the rest of the players union understands what it’s like to have the kind of cash Paul Allen, James Dolan or Mark Cuban has. How can you?
Unfortunately, the situation calls for a closer inspection of the situation from players. Reports are saying that Kevin Garnett has made himself the center of attention at recent talks by essentially being an unwavering, uncompromising and stubborn child. What the NBA needs now is not the Garnetts of the NBA but the Patty Mills and the Tyron Lues — the role players who want to play basketball in America and realize that has always been everyone’s dream.
There are several ways to work through a negotiation, and several areas you can compromise in without feeling like you’ve lost. For me, it was bidding up the price of my trade-in using common sense: I understood the value and demand of the new car and had a clear understanding of the position of the other side — that the overall price of my new car couldn’t be bargained down but that added value for my trade-in wouldn’t hurt the dealer in the slightest. Perhaps most importantly, I realized that the overall utility of my new car outweighed the value in bargaining down the sticker price of my car by a few hundred dollars.
Was it the perfect situation? Absolutely not, certainly wish I could have recieved more value off my new car as well as an increase in trade-in price. That’s not how negotiation — or compromise — works, unfortunately. It’s about two sides working together and each getting part of what they want.
The owners could simply head off onto their yachts and wait until the players and their mere millions run out. Instead, they’re offering them some kind of hinky 50/50 split that needs to be talked about and worked on. Acting like children and flat out refusal isn’t going to get them anywhere.
Really, it’s surprising that no one seems to have legitimately considered the utility gained by playing the games and having a season. My advice to the players? Trade it in, put some money down and get a payment you like. Otherwise, you’re going to have to strap a crate on to the back of your motorcycle just to get your gallon of milk home.
If you can afford it, that is.
Dane Carbaugh is a published research author and can be found writing about the NBA all over the Internet. He can be found on Twitter at @DaneCarbaugh
